Establishment in rats of a persistent response producing a net loss of reinforcement.

Stolz, Stephanie B.; Lott, Dale F.

doi:10.1037/h0042991

Cited by 26 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 3 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…That is, the "diligent" behavior of responding for food in the presence of free food is simply the result of the animal's previous conditioning history. The hypothesis was suggested by the fairly consistent result that the number of responses made in the test for preference (between response-contingent and free food) is related to the number of pellets earned or the number of operant responses emitted in prior training (Jensen, 1963;Jensen, Leung, & Hess, 1970;Stoltz & Lott, 1964;Tarte & Snyder, 1973). Indeed, if the amount of prior training is an important variable, then it is not surprising that many studies have demonstrated a preference for earned vs free reinforcement in that most studies have administered a far greater amount of earned than free training.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Responding in the presence of free food: Differential exposure to the reinforcement source

Mitchell

White

1977

Bull. Psychon. Soc.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Preference in rats for response-contingent reinforcement vs free food was studied as a function of differential exposure to the response-contingent and free reinforcement sources. Subjects trained primarily with response-contingent reinforcement exhibited responding for food in the presence of free food in later preference tests, and allocated more time to the response-contingent reinforcement source than did subjects trained with equal exposure to the reinforcement sources. Subjects trained to take freely available food did not respond in the presence of free food. The phenomenon of responding for food in the presence of free food was thereby demonstrated to be a consequence of prior operant or instrumental training.Responding for food in the presence of free food is a phenomenon that has aroused considerable recent interest because it contradicts the common assumption that an animal prefers freely available food to earning food by performing some instrumental or operant response. The typical procedure involves first training a hungry rat to press a bar for food pellets. Then, in a subsequent preference test, the animal is given a choice between barpressing for food pellets or obtaining identi· cal food pellets from a cup in the experimental chamber.

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Responding in the presence of free food: Differential exposure to the reinforcement source

Mitchell

White

1977

Bull. Psychon. Soc.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Similarly, Mandler (1964, p. 169) has stated that once instigated, a habitual response tends to "rush to completion and nothing external to the organism is necessary to insure that continuation of the sequence, even though external factors are crucial for its initiation." Strong evidence for this mode of coping comes from findings of response perseveration resulting in net loss of noncontingent reinforcement (Jensen, 1963;Stolz & Lott, 1964). Evidence for response invigoration following the initial transition from acquisition to extinction mainly comes from free operant research (Margulies, 1961;Notterman & Mintz, 1965).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A behavior field approach to instrumental learning in the rat: II. Training parameters and a stage model of extinction

Wong

1978

Animal Learning & Behavior

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Three runway experiments tested a stage model of extinction which postulated an orderly succession of three qualitatively different stages: habit, trial and error, and resolution. The model predicted that Stage 1 should be characterized by perseveration of habitual routes (i.e., response persistence) and the absence of competing responses; Stage 2, by an increase in investigatory behavior (response variation and hole exploration) and biting behavior; Stage 3, by a decrease in the competing responses of Stage 2 and continued increase in goal avoidance and substitution behavior (e.g., sand-digging). These predictions were largely confirmed. Further, Experiments 1 and 2 showed that, as expected by the model, continuous reinforcement (CRF) resulted in more practice of habitual routes in acquisition and greater response persistence, whilepartial reinforcement (PRF) resulted in more route variation and hole exploration in acquisition and greater goal persistence which was attributable to prior reinforcement of a trial-and-error coping strategy. Results of Experiment 3, which combined training trials and reward magnitudes orthogonally, supported the prediction that response persistence was positively related to training trials, and goal persistence negatively related to reward magnitudes. All three experiments demonstrated an inverted-U function in investigatory and biting behavior, as predicted by the stage model.

show abstract

“…It was subsequently shown that when previously correct arms end in open space, the rats run off the end of the arm (Dennis, 1932). Finally, it has been observed that when a rat has learned to run to a small food reward at the end of an alley, and a large pile of food is placed in the middle, the rat runs over the food for more than twenty trials (Stoltz and Lott, 1964). In the competition between visual stimuli and the learned plan, the planned response often takes precedence.…”

Section: Visual and Motor Working Memory And Planningmentioning

confidence: 99%

SOVEREIGN: An autonomous neural system for incrementally learning planned action sequences to navigate towards a rewarded goal

Gnadt

Grossberg

2008

Neural Networks

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Establishment in rats of a persistent response producing a net loss of reinforcement.

Cited by 26 publications

References 3 publications

Responding in the presence of free food: Differential exposure to the reinforcement source

Responding in the presence of free food: Differential exposure to the reinforcement source

A behavior field approach to instrumental learning in the rat: II. Training parameters and a stage model of extinction

SOVEREIGN: An autonomous neural system for incrementally learning planned action sequences to navigate towards a rewarded goal

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About